Cold
by OpheliaKitt
Summary: Perhaps then he had died, long ago. Perhaps that's why he felt, and was seen as...so cold... An entry into the January 2020 prompt in the Fête des Mousquetaires. Tag to S1E3.


_**A/N: So sorry! It's been quite a while! I have been struggling to find a muse - or time or just plain energy lately. It took me all month to carve out some time to just sit down and write something, and I know it's last minute, and a little weird, but it's done and it feels to good to have finished something new! First hurdle of 2020! **_

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Cold

_"__What's the matter with you?! Don't you care about Porthos?"_

The words still stung, hours later.

Was he really so cold-hearted? Had he come so far?

No. Athos knew, that wasn't him... not really.

And Aramis, who knew his heart better than most, surely did not believe those words as they poured from his lips – part in fear, part in anger.

It was this place, Athos knew, that chilled his very soul - that left him lost and cold and haunted.

He could feel the tendrils of his bitterest memories slowly snaking their way around his chest, squeezing his ribs tighter and tighter, the closer they came to his ancestral home.

But how could he explain this to them when there was so much that he had kept hidden and unsaid, even from the men he had grown to care for like brothers.

Brothers.

That word, that thought, again, chilled his heart.

Brother. Thomas.

Athos took a gulp from the bottle of wine he had been clinging to since he arrived.

Brother.

Of course he cared about Porthos. He was one of the only ties to this earth that Athos still valued.

"_Why didn't you mention it before?"_ D'Artagnan had asked, innocently enough,

Why hadn't he?

Why was it that he continue to drag the corpse of his former life – of all that love, laughter and loss – with him still, even now, years later when the flush of life and blood had left her lips and all the once golden memories of her and their life together were now slicked with a toxic grease.

They said he was cold.

Cold and impenetrable. Like a fortress. That's how others saw him.

But a fortress was safe too, wasn't it? Stone walls erected for protection.

And if he was cold, he was never cruel, was he?

It was his duty...it was his duty...

As they drew up in front of the house, he had avoided eye contact with the others as he led them to the south parlour and drew the windows open.

_"__So how did you know about this place?"_ D'Artagnan asked, the awe brought on by the grand estate evident in his voice.

_"__I own it,"_ he had replied, terse and clipped.

He had needed every ounce of energy to keep himself calm and to prevent the ghosts of all that once thrived here to come for him, to snatch him back into the dusty darkened alcoves that once hung with glowing chandeliers and echoed her laughter.

He drank again from the bottle.

Would it be the memory of her laugh or her eyes that finally broke him? Or would it be regret?

No, it couldn't be regret.

She had killed Thomas.

It was his duty.

She had to hang.

...his duty...

Remorse.

It was life-quenching remorse. The kind that could kill a man – that almost killed him.

He tried to drink again, but this soul-deep ache which encouraged his thirst held the wine in his throat, nearly choking him in his grief.

He spluttered and coughed and drank again.

He had so much to mourn here. His brother. His wife. His life. His innocence.

He resented having met her with the same resentment that he felt having lost her.

Those three Rs seemed to swirl fiendishly through his mind, each overpowering and consuming the next.

Regret.

Remorse.

Resent.

He regretted having been so blind. He was remorseful for all that it had cost him. He resented how it had changed him. How it had nearly killed him. How it forced him to lock his brothers out – to keep them separated from that side of himself. How it had forced him to grow cold.

The others had returned to Paris by now.

He was all alone with his memories.

He wandered the lifeless dark hallways, his hooded eyes glowing in the dark, his boots kicking up slight clouds of dust and echoing off the cobwebbed ceilings as he wallowed from room to room in the clutches of his pain and his drink.

His foot snagged and he stumbled in the dining room, the last few sips of wine sloshing at the bottom of the bottle as he lurched past the long table lined with chairs. He braced himself against the fireplace and draining the last of the wine in his grip, he slid down the wall so he came to rest on the cold marble floor.

The moon shrouded in her mourner's veil glared at him in distaste through the window.

When would this all end, he wondered, as the wine took hold and his heartbeat slowed and the familiar nightmares fuelled by these walls clutched at him, digging their nails deeper within him.

His head fell forward, his hair falling like a curtain to hide his eyes from the judgmental moon.

He had not lit the fire, and as the coolness of the night stole through the room and crept up his spine to suck the last of the warmth from his body, he let out a melancholy chuckle.

Was this how it would feel to die? This final feeling of all warmth fleeing from the body as the soul escaped the eyes?

Was this what Thomas felt?

Was this what she felt?

Perhaps then he **_had_** died, long ago.

Perhaps that was why he felt and was seen as…so cold…

ooooooooooooooooooooooo


End file.
